Capitol Hill

Capitol Hill is the largest historic residential neighborhood in Washington DC. Pierre L'Enfant chose the hill as the site of the US Congress in 1791, seeing it as a pedestal waiting for a monument. In 1793, Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson named the hill "Capitol Hill", invoking the name of the Capitoline Hill, one of the "Seven Hills" of Rome. From 1799 to 1810, it became a distinct community as the federal government became a major employer, and the workers at the Washington Navy Yard became the original residential population of the neighborhood. During the 1870s and 1880s, new houses were built, and it was a moslty stable middle-class neighborhood throughout its existence, despite economic decline and rising crime in the mid-20th century. Although the neighborhood was adversely affected by the crack epidemic of the 1980s, it underwent gentrification during the 1990s.